Inside
every fatty sentence is a lean sentence desperate to get out. |
Strive
for low-fat writing! Liposuction fatty matter from your essays — pay yourself $1 for every word you cut out — you'll soon become rich as any plastic surgeon. |
| Lard Ratio (aka Fat Ratio): "the proportion of excess fatty matter to lean meat (superfluous verbiage to necessary words)." In a typical first draft, the Lard Ratio runs 1:3 ... thus, a fatty 18 word sentence can usually be trimmed down to a toned, buff 12 word sentence; a fat-filled 500 word essay could be a lean, strong 350 word essay. |
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| FAQ | What does the "Golden Ratio" have to do with the "Lard Ratio"? |
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The golden ratio is an irrational number, approximately 1.61803..., that possesses many interesting properties. Shapes defined by the golden ratio have long been considered aesthetically pleasing in Western cultures, reflecting nature's balance between symmetry and asymmetry and the ancient Pythagorean belief that reality is a numerical reality, except that numbers were not units as we define them today, but were expressions of ratios. The golden ratio is still used frequently in art and design. The golden ratio is also referred to as the golden proportion, golden mean, golden section, golden number, divine proportion or sectio divina. | ||
| FAQ | What does a fatty sentence look like? |
| Fatty sentences can easily be recognized by their bloated condition. For example: "The reason why the males have to go to college out of those three that was mentioned is because the males are very over-populated in Korea." See if you can whittle this 26-word sentence down to approximately 18 words. | |
| FAQ | Are there any words in particular which are generally indicative of an undesirable condition of fattiness (i.e., excess wordiness)? |
| Good question! Look closely at every passive construction, every prepositional phrase, and every expletive ("there is" or "there are" clauses). See if you can liposuction this flabby 19-word question down to a svelte 10 or 12. | |
| FAQ | Is fattiness a condition which occurs in combination with other problems? |
| Yes, quite often fattiness occurs along with problems such as number disagreement, diction errors, and non-idiomatic expressions. Here's a good example of a sentence which needs sentence surgery: Though other international countries scrutinized Singapore for their drastic action, there are numerous benefits from the ban on chewing gum. Remember that passive constructions are sometimes, as Martha Stewart would say, "a good thing." See how many ways you can buff up the sentence. | |
| FAQ | Is a sentence fatty because of too many words? |
| Yes ... but sometimes no. Listen to the music of the sentence. For example, this sentence is not fatty: "Martin Luther King chose to make a change by using an effective, non-violent method while Malcom X chose an ineffective, violent method." This sentence uses parallel construction to communicate clearly. | |
| Writing Workshop. Lewis Hine was an American photographer whose turn-of-the-century photo-documentation of child labor helped change our society. Study this historic image and write a tight 500-word essay explaining how the Golden Ratio works in its composition. Remember the Lard Ratio — to end up with 500 buff words, you might have to initally write 800 words! Plan your Word Budget and organize your essay before you write. Use The Steps of the Writing Process. Turn in generating, organizing, all drafts, and copies of any sources you use. Put your stapled final draft on top, and put all your work into a paper (not plastic) folder. Make sure that your name is on every page your final draft. Due in one week. | ||
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